A key component of the cloud-ready information platform, SQL Server 2012 will help organizations unlock breakthrough insights across the organization as well quickly build solutions and extend data across on-premises and public cloud backed by mission critical confidence.

This page specifies the maximum sizes and numbers of various objects defined in SQL Server 2012 components and compared against the maximum sizes and numbers of various objects defined in SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 components.

SQL Server 2012 introduces 2 new string functions, namely the CONCAT string function and the FORMAT string function. The CONCAT string function concatenates two or more string values while the FORMAT string function formats a value with the specified format and optional culture.

SQL Server 2012 introduces the FORMAT string function which returns a value formatted with the specified format and optional culture. This
article shows all the different cultures available and shows how the output will look like for some of the standard date and time formats as well as some of the standard numeric formats.